Winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Music, Bernard Rands is well established as a major figure in contemporary music. His music has been described as ‘plangent lyricism with dramatic intensity’, qualities developed since his studies with Dallapiccola and Berio. Inspired in the 1970s by the then new Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, Rands researched and sketched Vincent for the next 40 years. Described by the Huffington Post as Rands’s ‘crowning achievement’, Vincent represents much of the great painter’s life and in particular the dramatic setbacks of his later years, contrasting the affection of his brother Theo with intense inner struggles, his vicious conflict with Gauguin, and his tragic and untimely death.